+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Pastor Galler is on vacation, but, for our reflection this morning on the Third Reading for the Last Sunday of the Church Year, Pastor Galler completed a sermon outlined by The Rev. Dr. Peter H. Nafzger, assistant professor at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. Rev. Dr. Nafzger’s sermon was published in the 20-20 volume of Concordia Pulpit Resources (30:4, pp.7, 44-46), to which publication Pilgrim subscribes primarily in order to supply sermons on occasions such as this, when our pastor is away and the congregation has not otherwise supplied the pulpit. The edited sermon reads as follows:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
There are so many people who need our help in different ways. Our congregation’s Titus Fund provides some assistance for food, shelter, and other emergency needs locally. Kilgore’s Helping Hands and the Fuller Center for Housing provide other food and shelter assistance in town. Then there are Meals on Wheels of East Texas and the East Texas Food Bank, which provide still other assistance with food in our area. Lutheran Social Services of the South provides foster-care and adoption services regionally, and Lutheran World Relief distributes internationally food, medical care, and items such as the blankets Pilgrim’s women used to assemble. Some of the people in need are also fellow believers in Jesus Christ, but all are equally created and valued by God. If you pay even a little attention, you will find that the needs seem to outweigh our ability to provide, which can be overwhelming for us.
Even Christians have difficulty helping those in need. Perhaps you can relate to the following scenario. A man comes home from work and sits down to open the mail. Most of the envelopes are bills. One after another, they add up. After four or five, he is overwhelmed with mounting debt. Then he opens up a letter from his congregation asking him for a special donation to cover his congregation’s budget shortfall. Genuinely sorry, he concludes that he cannot give anything beyond his regular offering this year. He puts his head in his hands in near despair. Do we see in that scenario our own inabilities? We all have only so much time, and perhaps we also have health restrictions, and certainly most have if not all of us have limited financial resources. Christians may well want to help not only other Christians but also other people who are not Christians. Such sincere desire is part of our sanctified nature. But, too often what we perceive as our own needs overshadow the needs of others. As a result, we may think of ourselves as unable or even be unwilling to help those in need. Some limitations are legitimate, others are not legitimate. We hear Jesus in the Third Reading describe those who, without their knowing it, served Him, and we see more clearly our neglect of others, as we see so many other sins, for which we deserve nothing but death now and eternal punishment on the Last Day.
Fortunately, an inheritance makes all the difference. Remember the man opening his bills? There remains one more envelope on the table, a letter from an attorney notifying him of an unexpected inheritance from a distant relative. The inheritance makes a difference in his life, enabling him to serve others by giving generously. In Jesus’s Third Reading teaching about the Last Day, He speaks to His sheep as those who have received an inheritance. Of course, in the First Reading (Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24), we heard the Lord speak about seeking out His people as a shepherd seeks out His flock, and, in today’s Psalm (Psalm 100; antiphon: v.3), we spoke of being the Lord’s people, the sheep of His pasture. In the Third Reading, the sheep’s kind actions toward “the least of these” flow from their trust in the promise of their eternal inheritance. Likewise, all Christians—made heirs in their Baptism, comforted in individual Absolution, and strengthened and nourished in the Sacrament of the Altar—are enabled to show kindness at least to their brothers and sisters in Christ, if not also to non-Christians.
The man in the scenario did not fully receive his inheritance right away but would have to wait several years for his distant relative’s estate to be settled. Similarly, the fullness of our inheritance in Christ is not completely realized until Jesus returns the final time. In the Third Reading, the key difference between the sheep and the goats is not so much their behavior itself but what their behavior indicates about their trust or lack thereof in the inheritance prepared for them. Jesus said that inheritance has been prepared for God’s people from the foundation of the world; in that sense God’s grace goes all the way back to creation. Similarly, the book of Revelation tells us that our names have been written in the Lamb’s Book of Life since before the foundation of the world, “the book of life of the Lamb Who was slain” (Revelation 13:8). God secured our inheritance by sending Jesus to become the sacrificial lamb. Our inheritance is in the precious blood of Christ, Who died on the cross for us, in our place. The guarantee of this inheritance for us Christians is found in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, referred to by St. Paul in today’s Second Reading (1 Corinthians 15:20‑28). “The Head that once was crowned with thorns / Is crowned with glory now” (Lutheran Service Book, 532:1)! Our inheritance can neither perish nor fade (1 Peter 1:3-4). The promise of eternal life is for all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man. And, even if our inheritance in Him is not fully received and completely realized for some time, it makes a difference in our lives already now.
Our promised inheritance enables us to live as heirs, loving those in need. The Third Reading gives us a glimpse of what will happen when Jesus returns: it is a description, a preview. When Jesus describes the behavior of the sheep and the goats, He is previewing the difference made by the inheritance. The good works done by the sheep are necessarily the result of living as heirs. They gave the hungry food. They gave the thirsty something to drink. They welcomed strangers. They clothed the naked. They visited the sick, and they came to those in prison. In the Third Reading, the Son of Man, the King, commands the sheep to “inherit” and the goats to “depart”, but the specific fruits of faith are not explicitly commanded, though the Holy Spirit certainly can use the Third Reading to bring forth such specific fruits of faith from us who repent and believe. The point is that, with our focus on what God has done for us in Christ, God’s giving His own Son to death on the cross for us, we in turn simply do what comes naturally to our redeemed selves by serving “the least of these”, our brothers and sisters in Christ, if not also others who are non-Christians. God’s promised inheritance turns us, who were previously worried about ourselves, to look toward and think about others who need our help. Jesus is the difference maker by making us heirs. By making us heirs, Jesus makes us glad to help those in need, whether we help them directly or through whatever agencies we might think best.
German Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once described how Christians treat one another by saying that Christians practice “the self-forgetfulness of love” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Communion of Saints [New York: Harper and Row: 1963], 123). Such “self-forgetfulness of love” is the impact of our inheritance. Knowing that God has given us a magnificently rich and eternal inheritance in Christ Jesus our Lord lets us forget about ourselves, because there really is nothing that we can gain for ourselves that adds to what God has already given us in Christ Jesus. Remember the scenario of the man opening his bills who also received word of an unexpected inheritance. News of his inheritance made all the difference; it enabled him toward self-forgetful endurance and generosity. Jesus embodied such self-forgetful love toward us by dying and rising to provide an inheritance for us prepared from the foundation of the world. And, the good news about that inheritance enables us to exercise self-forgetful generosity toward others. Understanding that reality, we go forward to serve those in need.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +